December 15, 2018

The Twenty-Four Days of Christmas - December 14th

December 14th

And I looked and beheld the Redeemer of the world... and I also beheld the prophet who should prepare the way before him. And the Lamb of God went forth and was baptized of him; and after he was baptized, I beheld the heavens open, and the Holy Ghost come down out of heaven and abide upon him in the form of a dove. 1 Nephi 11:27

Carol: Who Is the Child

A Boy Learns a Lesson
by Thomas S. Monson

In about my tenth year, as Christmas approached, I longed for an electric train. The times were those of economic depression, yet Mother and Dad purchased for me a lovely electric train.

Christmas morning bright and early, I thrilled when I noticed my train. The next few hours were devoted to operating the transformer and watching the engine pull its car forward - then backward around the track.

Mother said that she had purchased a wind-up train for Widow Hanson's boy, Mark, who lived down the lane at Gale Street. As I looked at his train, I noted a tanker car which I much admired. I put up such a fuss that my mother succumbed to my pleadings which gave me the tanker car. I put it with my train set and felt pleased.

Mother and I took the remaining cars and the engine down to Mark Hansen. The young boy was a year or two older than I. He had never anticipated such a gift. He was thrilled beyond words. He wound the key in his engine, but not being electric nor expensive like mine, and was overjoyed as the engine and the three cars, plus a caboose, went around the track.

I felt a horrible sense of guilt as I returned home. The tanker car no longer appealed to me. Suddenly, I took the tanker car in my hand, plus an additional car of my own, and ran all the way down to Gale Street and proudly announced to Mark, "we forgot to bring two cars down which belong to your train."

I don't know when a deed had made me feel any better than that experience as a ten-year old boy.

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